I have furniture!!

Hooray!

I no longer feel guilty about having avoided the gym for several months, as this weekend certainly put the "Labor" into Labor Day!

But the results are stunning.  My apartment no longer looks like the residence of some poverty-stricken squatter who owns only a butterfly chair, a coffee table, and a very old television.  It now looks like the home of, well, an adult. Really, it's kindof creepy.

However, this remarkable transformation did not come about without incident--most of which centers around my couch.

My parents came up for Friday and Saturday to help with the transport and installation of furniture, as well as to bring some stuff that I'd been storing at their house--like the nice dishes I inherited from my grandmother, which I can use now that I no longer have to worry about roommates breaking them.

Friday was an exhausting day of hauling heavy furniture up the VERY narrow stairs of my building, but we rewarded ourselves with a nice dinner and several glasses of Stella.  All in all, it was a good day.

Saturday I once again dragged my ass out of bed alarmingly early for a weekend and trudged over to my parents' hotel for an expensive but excellent breakfast.  Then we began our trek to the IKEA over in Jersey. (Hint: it may be a bit further away than the IKEA on Long Island, but the sales tax is only 3.5% vs NY's 8.75%.  And they were offering 10% off for Students!  See, I knew grad school was good for something!).

We only got moderately lost navigating across Manhattan (what can I say?  I never even walk downtown, let alone drive there!), but the real fun began towards the end of our stint on the Jersey Turnpike.

The highway splits and one half becomes 78 W and the other 95 S.  Easy, right?  The sign says "95 S Keep Left," so we merge left.  No problem.  

About 50 yards later there is another sign: "95 S, Right Lane."  Ooookay, sure.  So we merge right.  

50 yards later, yet another sign: "95 S, Keep Left."  WTF??  But we merge left.  Again.  

Then, you guessed it, ANOTHER sign, this one telling us, yet again, that we should be in the Right lane!  

By this time my dad is swearing up a storm, as are all the other drivers behind us, one of which decides to display his displeasure by cutting in front of us, slamming on his breaks, giving us the finger, and then speeding away.

Like it was our fault that whoever placed those signs was clearly acting out some bizarre revenge fantasy on the drivers of New Jersey.

Note: he also mis-labeled the exit ramp signs when we finally got off the turnpike.  Bastard.

However, we finally made it to IKEA and all was fine and dandy.  I scored a couch, a bookshelf, and several very nice rugs all for a ridiculously low price.  I really do love IKEA.

Then they wheeled my couch out of the warehouse and it seems that "some assembly required" really means "screw the legs on;"  aka: "How the HELL are we going to get all of this in Blazer along with 3 human beings??"

So my mom sat on my lap in the front seat the whole way back from Jersey.

And we got stuck in traffic.

But the *real* fun began when it was time to get the couch into my apartment.

Now, I had measured the narrowest part of the stairway before selecting the couch, and I knew it would fit up the stairs.  And it did, with remarkably little difficulty.

We should have taken that as a sign, because when it came time to angle it through my oddly-placed front door, we hit a snag.

Actually, it was the wall.  Then the door frame.  Then the ceiling.  No matter how we repositioned the damned thing, we were always shy by about half an inch.

This is the point where most normal people would have given up, but not the P______ family.  We are stubborn bastards.  So as we stand in the hallway sweating and swearing, I look around and say, "you know, that wall right there is just a sheet of plywood nailed over a door frame.  If we took it down, that would give us an extra 2 inches of space to work in."

Which is precisely what we did. 

We took down a fucking WALL to get my couch into my apartment.

You know, I never thought it would turn out to be a good thing that my landlords are crap at renovation, but if that wall had been properly installed sheetrock, we would have been screwed.

But whoever rents this apartment after me is gonna have to buy that damned couch.